Thanksgiving 1975

Sometimes writing about events and memories serves as a way to release them. I hope this is such a time, because this is not a favorite memory.

In November 1975 I worked at the Amherst newspaper for minimum wage, lived in a one-room apartment over a restaurant with a shared a bathroom on the hall. On Sundays I taught five and six year olds at Grace Episcopal Church, half a block from my apartment. Wednesday nights I hitchhiked the nine miles to Northampton and went to Zelda’s back room to dance with other Pioneer Valley lesbians, and every third Thursday I met with my Lesbians Over 25 group. On the weekends, if Lilith was playing in the immediate area I’d find a way to go. Some weekends my girlfriend Nancy came to visit. And that was pretty much what my life was like.

Nancy and I talked 2-3 times a week (I’d use the pay phone in the restaurant) and wrote each other almost every day.  The weekends she didn’t visit were very lonely. I tried to find ways to fill the hours until something happened. I walked to the used book store on Saturday mornings. The owner knew I didn’t have any money, but loved books, so he always made me a cup of tea and let me sit in his big chair, read, and listen to Robert J. Lurtzema who hosted a public radio classical music show. I’m sure there was plenty to do in Amherst with its three colleges, but I hadn’t figured out how to find activities.

My parents, well, my father, wrote at least once a week, and I always wrote back. However, the strain between us was obvious and painful for both sides.

One day I got a letter from my brother inviting me to visit his family in Chicago for Thanksgiving. He invited Mother and Dad as well. I wasn’t sure about seeing them, but it had been a year and a half. My brother thought it would be good for us all to meet on neutral ground. Dad had asked me to come to Birmingham several times, but I was afraid he and Mother would try some kind of intervention or worse. They might have had me committed, for all I knew, or refused to let me leave.

My brother didn’t laugh at me when I suggested these things, but he did assure me that I would be safe visiting his family. I’ve often wondered about his negotiations with my parents and how he convinced them to fly to Chicago. He sent me money for a plane ticket, and I made reservations. Grace Church had a craft fair on Saturday before Thanksgiving, and I splurged for a $10 handmade duffle bag for the trip since I didn’t have any luggage.

My brother met me at O’Hare Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving and took me back to his house in Skokie. I spent several hours with him, my sister-in-law, and five year old nephew, having a wonderful time and enjoying being with my family again.

When my parents’ flight came in late that afternoon, we were all there to meet them. My stomach was tied up in knots, unsure of what to say or what they would say. I saw Dad first, his mop of hair a bit unkempt as always, his smile a little forced. He moved to hug my brother first, so I looked for my mother. She didn’t even look at me and walked past as if I wasn’t there.

My sister-in-law, one of the best people I’ve ever known as well as one of the most sensitive, came over and gave me a hug. Dad came over and hugged me, holding me tighter and longer than usual, but then hurried to catch up with Mother, my nephew at his side. I began to cry. My brother and his wife, one on either side of me, put their arms around me as we walked to baggage claim. I doubt they will ever appreciate what they meant to me in that moment.

When we got back to my brother’s house, Mother and Dad went to their bedroom to unpack. I was sleeping on the sofa in the den, so there wasn’t anywhere for me to hide or go to cry. My sister-in-law was making some side dishes ahead of time for the next day, so I peeled potatoes and worked with her in the kitchen for a bit.

Finally, I wandered off to the living room and began going through their records – remember records? Dad came in for a couple of minutes and told me to give Mother time. I didn’t really have a choice.

I had just found my sister-in-law’s stash of Barry Manilow albums when my mother came in. I glanced at the clock. It had been four hours since she’d walked past me at the airport.

She asked me what I was doing. There was no reconciliation, no falling into each other’s arms.  No insights into our lives or thought processes. It was just killing time, but killing time with my mother that day was very, very sweet.

It’s been 35 years since that Thanksgiving. Mother was a tough nut to crack where my lesbianism was concerned. Eventually she found a way to live with me as I was and as I am. I never asked for her approval, but I did insist upon her acceptance.

Over time, we grew to be very close and talked at least twice a week after my father died. During one visit, she showed me her photo album from her childhood, and in those pictures I saw a different person than the thin-lipped, stern woman who marched past me that day in O’Hare. In my room, I have several photos of her from that album – as a ten year old girl, in shorts with her socks down around her ankles, as a teenager laughing from behind a bush, laughing at a church camp with a friend, sitting with her high school friends outside my grandfather’s house laughing.

My favorite photo is this one of her with my father when they were dating. They’re holding hands and looking at each other with so much love that I feel intrusive just looking at it. I’d never thought about my parents being young and in love. How did she get from that girl to the woman who would treat her own child the way she’d treated me.

I often asked her to tell me about her childhood and once asked her if anyone had ever told her to be more serious. Yes, she said. I guessed it must have been her father, but she said it was her mother. She told me her mother told her she was too flighty to marry a preacher. She had to be serious, because preachers were serious people. If she wanted my father to be a success, Grandmother told her, she had to stop being who she was and learn to be someone else. And she did.

I wasn’t willing to be anyone other than who I am. I had tried, but eventually had made the hard decision to be myself. I lost most of my friends from high school, but somehow I knew my decision would not cost me my family. As Mama Corleone tells Michael in Godfather II,  “You can never lose your family.”

©2010 jgschenck

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